Navigating the final frontier: The countdown to affordable space travel

While there are billions of dollars to be made in the space industry (a 2019 estimate put the number at $366 billion), and a handful of non-astronaut humans have made it to space, the cost is prohibitive, to put it lightly.

In June 2023, an individual ticket for a commercial space flight on Virgin Galactic cost $450,000, which puts space tourism well beyond the reach of the average American.

With three major companies — Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic, and Elon Musk’s SpaceX — gearing up to bring space travel to the masses, we were curious: When will it be possible for someone who’s not a millionaire to go to space?

Many experts agree on a specific time frame when commercial space travel will become widely accessible. Here’s a look at when they think that will be, and what needs to happen to get us there.

What does a ticket to space get you?

All commercial flights to space so far have been suborbital flights — they don’t do a complete orbit of the earth; they briefly go up into space and then come back down.

Each of the major companies offer a basic experience of space flight: customers take a rocket to the edge of the earth’s atmosphere (approximately 50 miles) and spend 10 minutes experiencing weightlessness before re-entry.

All passengers, regardless of how wealthy they are, still need to undergo physical training in order to board one of the rockets.

At Virgin’s Spaceport America in New Mexico, over the course of a few days, customers receive training in emergency procedures, as well as how to prepare for G-force and weightlessness.

SpaceX and Blue Origin both use the “immersion method” to train their clients, placing them in simulators to help prepare them for the journey.

While you will have to pass a medical questionnaire and check-up before you climb aboard, you can’t “fail” the physical training part of the mission, which is meant to prepare you physically and mentally.

When will the “average Joe” get to go?

Some experts believe that space travel could become feasible for the average citizen as early as 2050.

But, in an interview with CNN, aerospace engineer Ron Epstein asserted that in order to provide affordable space travel, spacecrafts will have to be a lot bigger, so that the cost of each trip can be spread out across more people.

Blue Origin auctioned off its first commercial ticket in 2021 for $28 million, with the money supporting their charitable initiative, Club Future, which encourages children to get involved in careers in science and technology.

There have since been a handful of other paying customers, who have each paid about $1 million. While they have yet to fully open to “civilian” space flyers, if you want, you can submit an online application to be considered for their next crewed mission.

After a few years’ hiatus, in the last half of 2023, Virgin Galactic rebounded with six flights in as many months. Looking ahead, it has canceled all of the flights it had booked in 2024 and cut 18% of its workforce in order to funnel all its profits towards building a new vessel, the Delta spaceplane.

Of the three main commercial space flight companies, the most mysterious and ambitious is SpaceX. Not only does Elon Musk want to send civilians to space, he wants to build a city on Mars.

Although insiders think his chances are far-fetched, Musk claims that by 2050 he can build a city of over a million people on Mars. He plans to have the first person on the Red Planet by 2029.

In terms of commercial space travel, in 2021 SpaceX was able to send a few “civilians” to space for three days on its Crew Dragon. Inspiration4 was chartered by billionaire Jared Isaacson, who donated the other three seats.

Extraterrestrial accommodations

Where will people stay when they arrive in outer space?

For those fliers who are able to afford the price of several million dollars to make it there, they may have access to luxury accommodations within a few years.